FBN and Google Team Up to Give Farm AI the Context It Needs
September 30, 2026 | Jennifer Marston
Agtech | Artificial Intelligence | Deeptech | Precision Agriculture | US & Canada
FBN will make the first features of its "AI context engine" available to early test users now, with a broader rollout expected this fall.
Image credit: FBN
Farmers Business Network (FBN) and Google’s AI Futures Fund (AIFF) announced a partnership this week to build an “AI context engine” for agriculture. This means providing farmers with a continuously updated picture encompassing agronomy, finances, equipment, and markets, and that AI tools can draw from to offer tailored advice about the overall farm.
The deal grants FBN early access to Google’s frontier models and expertise in model development; FBN will test these models against the many complexities involved in running a farming operation.
Most AI tools today provide farmers with generic advice but little tailored to their specific soils, crops, local geographies, and weather patterns. They also fail to connect this information directly to activities like grain marketing, purchasing new equipment, or applying for a loan.
As FBN co-founder Charles Baron told AgFunderNews, "You can take your precision data and put it into a model today and have it generate very interesting agronomic conclusions and plans. It doesn’t tie to commercial execution."
FBN believes it is well-positioned to bridge this gap, thanks to its decade-long business built around connecting farmers to inputs, financing, grain trading, and enrolling in premium sustainability programs.
"With AI now, the capability is there to both connect all of those experiences and enable the commerce to take place directly from those experiences," said Baron. "A farmer can analyze their agronomic program, and then an agent can assist the farmer with an immediate product selection and purchasing decision."
Farming presents unique challenges for AI models, with external forces like weather, geography, soil history, and crop rotations influencing a farmer’s decisions. To be effective, AI must not only pull data from these sources but also normalize it and translate it into actionable steps, explains Baron.
Some farms are already experimenting with AI, he adds, "You’re getting this explosion in the creativity of farms to create custom solutions and custom insights for their operation. But it’s very difficult for them to integrate those hyper-personalized insights with a safe and trusted commercial system."
Powered by Norm
While the specific partnership with Google AIFF developed in recent months, it builds on a long relationship between the two companies, with Google Ventures having backed FBN for several years.
Google AIFF will assist FBN in developing "agriculture’s first AI Context Engine for farmers." The engine will power Norm, FBN’s AI advisor launched in 2023.
Norm, described by Baron as "the AI layer behind the FBN experience," will route tasks across multiple models. "We get to test the most advanced models against each other, and be part of the co-development of them to make them as useful as possible for farmers," he said. "It allows our team to stay ahead of the curve for what’s coming out of the frontier labs and capabilities from from Google."
Eventually, third-party developers will also be able to build on the engine.